Aletho News

The ‘Gaza Treatment’: How Media Headlines Obscure Who is Bombing Yemen

By Robert Inlakesh | The Palestine Chronicle | November 10, 2026

As Saudi airstrikes are increasingly inflicting civilian massacres across Yemen, the corporate media are employing various rhetorical tricks to downplay the atrocities. A very similar playbook to that utilized to downplay the Gaza genocide is now being used to cover up war crimes in Yemen.

On Friday, Saudi airstrikes targeted a packed marketplace in the Waziyah area of Yemen’s Taiz Province. Yemen’s Health Ministry reported that the initial death toll was 30 killed and eight wounded, all of whom were civilians. The footage released of the incident showed the extent of the crime that had been committed.

Then, on Saturday, Saudi fighter jets bombarded residential homes in the village of al-Shariya within the Bani Hashish district, located to the east of the Yemeni Capital City of Sana’a. Not only did the Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF) bomb civilian homes in the village, but it also launched double-tap strikes that impacted the first responders. At least 44 civilians were killed, with another 40 having been left wounded. Of those killed, 21 were children and another 10 were women.

While the corporate and mainstream media have all but ignored the daily bombings targeting civilian infrastructure and populated urban areas, these massacres were too big not to merit articles.

“Airstrikes on a market in southwestern Yemen kill at least 30, Houthis say”, reported the Associated Press on the Friday massacre, mirroring the language of using “Hamas says” to undermine the authenticity of the event. Al-Jazeera meanwhile ran with the headline “Yemeni gov’t forces, Houthis trade blame for deadly strikes on Taiz market”.

Both reports cite officials within what they called Yemen’s “Internationally Recognized Government” claiming that no airstrikes were carried out in that location. While AP does mention that the “Yemeni Government” officials it is citing are Saudi-backed, Al-Jazeera fails to do the same. What is striking about this, however, is that both fail to mention the simple fact that it was Saudi Arabia’s air force that was responsible; nobody blamed Yemeni forces.

Also, why would a so-called “Internationally Recognized Government” be speaking on behalf of and claim to have precise knowledge of a foreign country’s air strikes? In the past, some corporate media outlets have even gone as far as labeling Saudi bombings as airstrikes carried out by a “Yemeni Air Force” belonging to the Saudi-backed forces, although no such thing exists.

There is, of course, no evidence presented to suggest that the Ansarallah-led Yemeni Armed Forces – what the AP and Al-Jazeera incorrectly call “the Houthis” – had carried out this massacre. In fact, the area struck was under the Sana’a-based government’s control; there is extensive documentation of the event, all suggesting Saudi airstrikes.

However, the next day’s massacre was simply undeniable, as the actual Saudi airstrikes were recorded as they struck residential buildings, killing 44 civilians near Sana’a. Yet, the BBC produced the headline “Houthis say at least 33 killed in Saudi air strike”. The British-State Broadcaster even manages to fail in correctly implementing the English language, as air strikes, and not a single “air strike”, were carried out.

You will also see across the mainstream media the phrase “Houthi-run Yemeni Health Ministry”. This language is eerily similar to the “Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry” propaganda that the public has been subjected to for over three years now. However, in Yemen the phrase is not even at least partially accurate; there is no political movement or entity calling itself “the Houthis”; instead, it is Ansarallah that they are describing.

At least Hamas is actually the real acronym for the movement that has governed Gaza since 2007. In Yemen, left is right and up is down when it comes to the corporate media’s coverage. This is so much the case that the news that the public is consuming on the issue barely even resembles what is transpiring inside the country.

Take, for example, this Reuters headline, explaining how the Saudi-Yemen ceasefire was broken in July earlier this year: “Houthis fire missiles at Saudi Arabia, breaking years of calm.”

Not only does the article title suggest that it was Ansarallah that was responsible for breaking the ceasefire, but it also does so while embedding the video of the Saudi airstrikes that actually ended the ceasefire inside the article. This leaves no doubt as to the intentions of Reuters here; they simply lied in favor of promoting the Saudi narrative.

When Reuters covered the civilian massacre committed near Sana’a on Saturday, its headline began with “Houthi-run health ministry says…”.

Here I have provided examples from some of the most trusted and reputable news sources in the English-language media, all of which exhibit a level of bias that greatly distorts the reality in Yemen.

Even the insistence on calling Ansarallah “the Houthis” is not a measure taken against IS by the mainstream media. Take Al-Jazeera in Arabic and English as an example here; both use “the Houthis”, yet for IS they have avoided using the pejorative acronym “Daesh” to describe them.

In Arabic, Al-Jazeera calls them “Dawleh al-Islamiyyeh” or “Tanzeem al-Dawleh”. In other words, IS has been afforded more favorable terminology to describe them than Ansarallah.

It suffices to say that the reporting on Yemen has been utterly dreadful, not just since July, but for well over a decade now. The reason why such propaganda persists is that there is little popular objection to it.

November 10, 2026 - Posted by aletho | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Saudi Arabia, Yemen